Faure, Élie

(1873-1937)

   essayist, art historian

   Born in Sainte-Foy-le-Grande, Élie Faure, brought to his career as an art critic (1902) a great curiosity for all the new ideas of the period, notably the role of African art and of the cinema. Influenced by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, the French political theorist georges sorel, and the American writers Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt whitman, Faure was the author of several works, including Les Constructeurs (1914), in which profiles of such diverse individuals as jean-baptiste de lamarck, Nietzsche, Feodor Dostoyevsky, and paul cézanne are presented along with an analysis of the state of mind of western civilization in the 19th century. In his Histoire de l'art (1909-21) and L'Esprit des formes (1927). A well-known scholar in his era, he also had an active political life, supporting the cause of alfred dreyfus (1896) and the Spanish Republicans at the beginning of the spanish civil war (1936).